


The Calm

by RKPYoshi



Category: Vocaloid
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-16
Packaged: 2019-10-10 22:33:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17434721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RKPYoshi/pseuds/RKPYoshi
Summary: And now, the sky is never blue, like Gumi had said it had once been. The sky is nothing but a charcoal grey from dawn to dusk, the sun blazing so bright it seemed to loom just over the Earth's cusp.If the androids could breathe like the humans, surely, they'd die here, too.





	The Calm

* * *

 

 _“Then, although it was the end of the story, I put it at the beginning of the novel, as if I needed to tell the end first to go on and tell the rest.”_  
_-Lydia Davis._

\---

Being down here, where the androids were kept, melting metals and alloy skeletons—all gloomy grey with sparks of firelight—is like being in a sweatshop; dusty floors, the absence of natural and artificial lighting and no ventilation whatsoever. Yuma wears a face mask that covers his mouth, his left eye, the whole side of his face where the accident had happened. All grueling and raw, scars like welts across his flesh, on a face he'd once loved. But he says it's for the sake of his lungs.

With an air tank hoisted over his shoulder like a hydration pack, he shoulders past androids with missing limbs, bulging eyes hardly in their sockets. Ones with open circuits on the tips of their spines; the desecrated and leftover. A few of them nod at him. One smiles. Yuma keeps his eyes on the floor and leaves the workshop.

Back upstairs, where the sun shines a molten orange, hazy and ugly through the dark glass of the building's windows, he can just make out the passing train overhead. It clatters soundless and far away, but the rumble is undeniable, it shakes the earth beneath his feet and brings with it: a thrum in his soles, the promise to Gumi that he will be home soon.

He must move quickly. He realizes this as he pulls his greasy hair into a ponytail. It'll be another twenty minutes before he reaches their side of the city. It's as he embarks on this daily travel he spots the first thunder cloud, blooming black in the east. By then, mild gusts of wind blow through. It’s musty and metallic, the stench of copper wire and rusted pennies rise from the dirt.

  
It started, of course, when the fire rained from the north and the city was engulfed in a turbine womb of acidic rains and black murk. Yuma hadn't been there for it, but Gumi had. He had grown up on the stories of the Android wars and the polluted streams, how the beasts of the deep ocean had washed up dead, frothing with mercury. The crops had attracted blight and the storms came tremulous, balking winds shattering glass from every pane—buildings had collapsed as heavy as fallen gods before every foot. Gumi was there for all of it.

And now, the sky is never blue, like Gumi had said it had once been. The sky is nothing but a charcoal grey from dawn to dusk, the sun blazing so bright it seemed to loom just over the Earth's cusp. Where the moon was once large now dwindled and swayed the tides. The oceans were no more, but the streams were still there, collecting brownish rains no longer tainted. Though they were still ugly, like the craters of the Earth that are so like the ones once seen on the moon's surface. But the city was intact, at least a little bit; a piece of mechatronic heaven that clanked under boots and smelled sour and even more so like rust in the winters.

If the androids could breathe like the humans, surely, they'd die here, too.

Yuma sprints most of the way home, through hover lanes of HOV cars with their blue flames and invisible steam, the scraps from the workshop clattering loudly in his side bag. It’s noticeably heavy from how the strap jumps and jolts on his shoulder with each step, but he feels nothing as it slaps against his thigh. When one’s bones have been replaced with carbon fibre more times than Yuma could count on his fingers - including the ones he had lost and replaced, too - nerves tend to be non-existent at some point.

Yuma leaves his air tank on the kitchen table beside the monochrome salt and pepper shakers and the navy coloured napkins Gumi loves so much and leaves through the back door to the dusty metal grey of their backyard. Gumi sits in a wicker chair. Her hair is still in the bun it was in a few weeks ago, jade fringe braided into the rest of her hair. Her complexion is pale and clear, save for the spot along her jawline, marred by dried dirt off Yuma's fingers the morning before he’d set out.

Her left palm up rests on her thigh. It's no longer a shock to see the missing fingers there and the wedding band on the wrong hand, the wrong knuckle, for the one it had once been on was now gone. Yuma still cradles Gumi's hand between his own, bringing the sharp bone of her knuckles to his forehead; such a thing doesn't stop him. The comfort in this contact is more than any other human could ever give Yuma.

"I found a few things, but... not a lot," Yuma tells her.

Gumi blinks and touches the mask with her good hand, unclasping the latch beside Yuma's right ear. No, he tries to say with his visible eye, topaz iris glistening, but Gumi has pulled the mask away.  
The air tastes odd, like tarnished nickel, like the rising storm leering hot over the top of them. He can smell the sour earth congealing like clotted blood, rising in warm fumes. But then Gumi is touching his scars. The skin is still tender—has always been and will probably always be. Her fingers are cold and the pressure is gentle as she caresses Yuma's cheek, the tips of her fingers shaking slightly.

"Should we go downstairs?" Yuma mutters, his eyes slipping shut at the contact. It’s a silent agreement of sorts.

Once down there, where the stench of the world can't be smelled and all the passing sounds have been muted to a far-off tremble just beyond their reach, Gumi sits on her old workbench (now Yuma's), her hand resting on the raised medical plate that hovers at his chest comfortably. Gumi closes her eyes, wary and fatigued as Yuma takes out the scrap metal he had been able to scavenge. It isn't much, but it's enough for a proper index finger and a thumb.

There's no pain, for the nerves there have been shot, but still, Yuma nuzzles his nose to Gumi's cold cheek to try and comfort her. He still remembers the fluttering feeling in his stomach like a buzzing live wire: he'd been terrified as it grew more so with every second that other time when Gumi had rebuilt his femur for him. But she had done the same for him. It was able to calm him down, to not feel frightened.

It's a human response Yuma can still identify well; fear, that is. That which bodes and grows and becomes something wild, deep in the pit of one's bowels. The idea of being cut open, parts of one's being replaced with another's—parts from androids, nonetheless— it was more frightening than when the hellish blue of Uranus's rising light fell into Saturn's orbit.

"You alright?" Yuma whispers. Gumi's mouth twitches and she nods. He's just about done, Yuma mentally promises as he melds the fibre to the remaining bone in Gumi's knuckles. Bursts of blood bright as fresh oil pour steadily from Gumi's open finger, but soon the bleeding stops and the newly made skeleton is covered with silicone, so perfectly matching the colour of Gumi's skin it's hard to believe it isn't quite real. Yuma hums softly, a smile forming at the corners of his eyes. He lifts Gumi's hand, her fingers splayed out across his palm. Gumi's eyes glimmer faintly. She brings her hands together, fingers wrapping tightly about each other. She isn't supposed to speak, but she does anyway, mouthing a quiet, but genuine 'thank you' against Yuma's cheek.

"Later," Yuma begins, "I'll fix the others. Your middle finger and-" he kisses Gumi's new knuckles, the texture of her synthetic skin strange but not unknown, "-your ring finger." Gumi smiles. With her new digits, she brushes aside Yuma's sooty pink locks and cups his face, the scars raised and red (but not unsightly to her) just beneath the pads of her fingers. "Honestly, it’s okay. You don't need to go back." Her voice is warm, concerned.

Yuma shrugs, despite the calm that rushes into him. He won't ever admit the uncertainty that comes over him each visit to the city, and the fear that breeds just below his skin when the androids turn to him, watch him come and go with mouths moving over words never spoken, for their audio boxes have all been broken.

"I'll go," he says instead, his mouth pressing whispering kisses to the curve of Gumi's jaw. "But maybe not tomorrow."

When Gumi's arms wrap about him a second later, her palms flat against Yuma's spine, he can feel all eight points of Gumi's fingers through his shirt. He smiles against this pressure; his scars forgotten, the world forgotten. Rain pelts distant and turbulent against the upstairs windows, but Yuma doesn't acknowledge anything but the way Gumi smiles against his mouth.

**Author's Note:**

> My first and only attempt at sci-fi so far. I fell down the D:BH rabbit hole and wanted to write a lil' something. Thanks for reading!


End file.
